WHY does the form look utterly different in different previews when I've not changed anything?

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Why do you not want to answer this thread?(Your answer will be sent to Jeanette and Aytekin)

Christopher Burke

Asked on May 29, 2016 at 04:34 AM

Dear Jotform.

I HOPE I've not sent this twice but the first time I sent it something odd happened and then I couldn't see it in the questions area anywhere so I'm sending it again to be on the safe side, if you see the same thing twice, that's why.

Dear Sir.

Trying to create a dead simple form - two rows of checkboxes and a blurb of text over a picture I've uploaded. Thing IS - what it looks like depends entirely on where you are in the system. If you're in the THEMES area - the bit that comes up 'The most Sophisticated Form Designer Ever Built' or similar, it looks great. Absolutely how I want it. BUT - if you go to Preview FROM the Themes area, it totally changes shape. It becomes a long rectangle with the text in the wrong place. AND - if you go to Preview from Form BUILDER, it's even worse - not only has the shape changed AGAIN to a tall A4 Portrait shaped rectangle but the tickbox is now slap bang over the girl's face when in the THEMES bit it was perfect, exactly where I wanted it! It don't stay put.

And neither do the fields, which is the most annoying part of your system TBH. It doesn't matter where you slide them to, they slide back to where THEY want to be. Why can't you just slide them wherever you want? I mean I used an online web-designer - can't remember its name now, years ago - and I remember that letting you slide anything anywhere and it just stayed there. So it IS possible to do that but yours doesn't, IT decides where the fields are gonna be and the user gets precious little say in it.

But that's not the main bit here - I just don't understand why in previews from two different areas, it comes up looking utterly different to how it looks in the design section. I'm HOPING I can attach three screenshots to this to show you. BTW - how I WANT the thing to look is how it looks in the THEMES area - THERE it's utterly perfect. It's only when you go to PREVIEWS it changes. (Apropos of nothing other than me being an English teacher, you've got a bunch of spelling/grammar mistakes on your pages here, a few classic howlers, but never mind!)

And now it's telling me it can't upload my 2.5mb JPEG screen shot (saved in Windows PAINT) because only image files are allowed (so what the heck's a JPEG if not an image file!?!) I'll try another way.

All three links seem to work despite only two being clickable. (Dunno why!) Please - I want it to STICK looking like it does in the Themes/Form Designer shot, without the menu down the right-hand side of course(!), how do I make that layout stick in ALL Previews!?! (IF it HAS to look like one of the other ones, I want it to look like the PREVIEW from form BUILDERwith transparency (partial) on the checkboxes so you can see the girl's face a bit. But I'd love it to look like the THEMES/Form Designer shot really. And yes I was saving it before returning to other views. (Re Themes shot - is it possible to move the SUBMIT box down to the white area under the picture and make it STAY THERE!?! Every time I slide it down it jumps back up. Even tried putting in dummy fields to force it down but the results in different previews were hilarious so they went. WHY can't I just slide it down and it STAYS PUT!?!) Incidentally - last gripe - why all this injecting CSS all over the place? I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't understand CSS. But I do understand programming. As the CSS seems mainly to be changing variables, why not just have radio buttons to turn with the mouse to change the variables - the init. value gets 'injected' when you click on the button, then the value changes as you turn it, and there could be a reset button if you want it to go back to how it was.